New Delhi: On the day the Narendra Modi government summoned senior US diplomat to strongly object against remarks of State department spokesperson on the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by the Enforcement Directorate in Liquor scam, a chastised Germany on Wednesday took a decisive U-turn on the issue and refused to wade into internal affairs of India.
PM Narendra Modi with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
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Last Saturday, the Ministry of External Affairs summoned a senior German diplomat to South Block and served a demarche to Bonn, protesting against the statement of the German spokesperson on the internal affairs of India. The condescending remarks of the German spokesperson were seen by MEA as interfering with the Indian judicial process and undermining the independence of the Indian judiciary.
But the firm counter launched by MEA reaped results as German spokesman yesterday refused to share any details about the summoning in Delhi and also chose not to comment on the case.
The spokesman stated : “Have commented on the case. Would not report from confidential conversations now. Both sides have a great interest in deepening the cooperation and we and the Indian side look forward to the next government consultations, which are expected to take place in the autumn of this year. The Indian Constitution guarantees basic human rights and freedoms. We share these democratic values with India as a strategic partner.” The response of the spokesperson was in German language and this is the closest translation.
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The spokesman stated : “Have commented on the case. Would not report from confidential conversations now. Both sides have a great interest in deepening the cooperation and we and the Indian side look forward to the next government consultations, which are expected to take place in the autumn of this year. The Indian Constitution guarantees basic human rights and freedoms. We share these democratic values with India as a strategic partner.” The response of the spokesperson was in German language and this is the closest translation.
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The German response came at a time when India made it very clear that democratic countries like the US have to be very careful in commenting on fellow (in this case the largest) democracies over the due process of law. New Delhi has also made it clear that commenting on internal affairs of third countries is a two way street and will lead to bad precedents.
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It is understood another country from Western Europe has quietly informed India that it will not comment on the arrest of Kejriwal in a ED money laundering probe in Delhi Excise Policy scam.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/India News/Germany gets message from Modi govt, stays out of Kejriwal’s arrest proceedings
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